Controversial pundit Ezra Levant makes the case for fracking in new book

Ezra Levant.

It doesn’t take long for Ezra Levant’s penchant for rapid-fire name-calling to shine through in an interview. To be fair, it’s not as if it comes out of the blue.

The Calgary-raised lawyer, right-wing pundit, bestselling author and host of The Source on Sun News Network is being asked about what is clearly one of his pet peeves: high-profile celebrities who are opposed to fracking, the controversial mining process that is the focus of Levant’s newest book, Groundswell: The Case for Fracking (260 pages, $29.95, McClelland and Stewart). Specifically, it’s a question about power. When going up against massive multinational corporations such as Halliburton, for instance, how much sway does a celebrity really have?

“Good point, I mean Mark Ruffalo is an airhead, let’s be honest,” he says quickly, referring to the Oscar-nominated actor and anti-fracking activist. “Yoko Ono? She is a terrible musician, can we all agree? But she gets buzz and attention and makes it cool and acceptable. That’s the thing. There’s a denormalization of fracking that is being attempted here. It’s for people who are low-information, casual observers and followers. Well, peer pressure actually has an affect on politics. If you have all these celebrities coming out against. Well, that makes it cool to come out against. That’s the whole idea of a celebrity endorser. It’s just a part of marketing.”

Levant has a lot more to say about crusading celebrities who target fracking and Big Oil, all of it expressed with his trademark frenzied delivery. But really, in Levant’s world. the Ruffalos and Susan Sarandons and Matt Damons and Yoko Onos are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the big green picture of the environmental movement.

Fracking is the process where liquid is injected at high pressure into subterranean rocks to extract oil or gas. In Groundswell, Levant presents it as key to solving both energy and geopolitical problems, a way to “sap the strength of menacing regimes” such as oil-rich Russia and Iran and “empower the good guys” such as Ukraine and Israel. He also argues that it has proven to be a sturdy economic driver, particularly in otherwise impoverished areas of the U.S.

As with most of his mainstream books for McClelland & Stewart — which include the oilsands-cheering Ethical Oil and the Omar Khadr-bashing Enemy Within — Groundswell is elegantly argued. Levant tackles all the anti arguments: it contaminates water or uses too much of it, it uses dangerous chemicals and causes seismic activity — and dismantles them chapter by chapter.

But this is Ezra Levant. And, let’s face it, no matter how hot an issue fracking may be, it’s certainly not the most enthralling of topics to write a book about, particularly if he were to stick solely to the science. So Groundswell showcases more than a little of Levant’s notoriously combative streak, putting the issue in a distinctly political context. Specifically, he uses the topic to launch attacks on the environmental movement, painting it as a large and moneyed behemoth that is in cahoots with OPEC and Vladimir Putin in discrediting fracking. Josh Fox, director of the controversial Oscar-nominated, anti-fracking documentary Gasland earns an entire chapter of wrath in which Levant portrays the filmmaker as an opportunistic fame-hunter whose film has distasteful ties to the Venuzualean government. While the green movement may have at one time been made up of real people who fought for real issues, it is now a big-money lobby that employs professional protesters, Levant argues.

“You cannot negotiate with Josh Fox,” Levant says. “You cannot negotiate with the Tides Foundation or the Rockefeller Brothers Fund or Bill McKibben. They are terminators. Josh Fox does not want a better fracking industry, he wants no fracking industry. That is the great problem with environmental battles in 2014. Most environmentalists are good-faith, normal people who want a cleaner world. But the organizers and the agitators and the funders and the message-masters and the litigators, they are a professional class that did not exist even 20 years ago.”

Whether you buy into Levant’s arguments or not, he has certainly found a solid formula for producing bestselling books since hooking up with McClelland & Stewart for 2009’s Shakedown: How Our Government is Undermining Democracy in the Name of Human Rights. That book chronicled his battle against the Alberta Human Rights Commision after he published controversial Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad in his now-defunct Alberta-based magazine, Western Standard. It won him a Writer’s Trust award and praise from across the political spectrum.

But Levant says he chooses topics for his books that he believes have not been fairly represented in the media, issues that beg for commentary from what he refers to as “our side.” That side, of course, is Canada’s right wing and Levant believes it has been far too quiet when it comes to certain issues. For instance, no one had written a first-hand account of what it was like to be a defendant in a human-rights hearing, he says. No one other than environmentalists and “haters” were writing about the oilsands. No one was stressing that child soldier and convicted terrorist Omar Khadr had “killed someone” to earn his sentence at Guantanamo Bay as a skinny, Canada-raised teen back in 2002.

“With fracking, I felt a little bit of that,” he says. “There are so many anti-fracking communicators out there. There’s been a similar, ‘Oh my God if I don’t do this, who will?’ type of feeling. That’s what motivates me.”

Interestingly, as Levant’s status as a bestselling and award-winning author grows, so does his reputation as an outspoken right-wing TV host on the ratings-challenged Sun News network. The former Western High School and University of Calgary student, who now lives in Toronto with his family, has parlayed his role as a conservative insider and political adviser into an occasionally over-the-top media persona or, as Maclean’s Magazine once described him, “right-wing gadfly who likes to offend.” Critics have suggested his TV antics often provide more unintentional comedy than intelligent political commentary, whether he’s attacking a potted plant to protest Earth Day or being bonked on the head with a placard by a protester at a No Enbridge rally in Vancouver.

But Levant makes no apologies for his on-air personality.

“I want it to be entertaining TV, so does Peter Mansbridge,” he says. “I’m not as funny as Jon Stewart, but he uses comedy and entertainment and irony and he dresses up sometimes. Sometimes I use some humour and a style. I’ve got a noisy personality. I let my personality run on TV. In real life, I guess I’m slightly collared. But I just love getting excited on TV. That’s sort of who I am.”

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